Strasbourg, 01/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has decided this year to award the Vaclav Havel human rights prize to an Azerbaijani dissident, at the very time that Azerbaijan holds the rotating presidency of the committee of ministers of the Council of Europe until November.
As the winner has been imprisoned since December 2013, his father, Asaf Mammadov, collected the prize, of a value of €60,000, on his behalf. It was awarded by Anne Brasseur, president of the PACE, who paid tribute to a “long-standing partner who shares his knowledge of the situation in his country not only with the Parliamentary Assembly, but also with other bodies of the Council of Europe, such as the Human Rights Commissioner”. Anar Mammadli set up the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS), of which he is president, in his country. The representatives of the two other shortlisted candidates - the B'Tselem Information Centre for Human Rights (Israël) and the Jesuit Refugee Service (Malta) - also received distinctions at the ceremony which was held on Monday, at the start of the autumn session of the PACE. (VL)